OLD SETTLERS' MEETING

STOP

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28 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

OLD SETTLERS' MEETING.

[Extract from an account of the first Settlers' Meeting in Wayne coun-
ty, and probably the first in the State, taken from the Richmond Jeffer-
sonian of September 13, 1855.]

PRESIDENT, David Hoover; vice-presidents, Smith Hunt and
John Peele. After prayer, some interesting portions of the
proceedings of the first Board of Commissioners of Wayne coun-
ty, dating as far back as 1817, were read, which were illustrat-
ed by relations of divers incidents of those early days by Messrs.
Rariden, Test, Newman, and others.

John Beard, of Milton, was then called on for his "experi-
ence." He gave an account of his removal to this region, and
the gratification he felt in exchanging the red soil, full of flint
stones, of his native Carolina, for the black and fertile lands of
Indiana. In the vigor of youth, he regarded not the Herculean
labors and hardships which then rose before him, for, to use his
own words, he "felt that he had a fortune in his own bones."
He declared that, although looking back from the present time
the lives of the pioneers might appear by no means enviable, yet
they did not so seem to these who experienced them. Mr. Beard
added, among other interesting facts, that a little daughter of
his own was the first white person who died in the present limits
of Wayne county (in 1807); and that the first settlers had to go
either to Lawrenceburg or Hamilton to mill.

Mr. Beard was followed in similar details of experience by
Smith Hunt, Henry and Frederick Hoover, John Peele, Jeremiah
L. Meek, and others.

Perhaps both the oldest man and the oldest settler present was
Hugh Cull.

The next meeting is appointed for the last Sunday in Septem-
ber, 1856, at Centreville. The idea of such meetings is highly
laudable, and we trust that hereafter, due efforts will be made
to enlist the interest and presence of as many of the early set-
tlers as possible, so as the more effectually to further the objects
proposed by these social reunions of the rapidly diminishing rem-
nant of the men and women to whom the present generation
are so much indebted.